Michigan Interfaith Power & Light

Its primary focus is on helping churches, mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship to adopt environmentalist technologies such as solar panels and energy-efficiency schemes, but it also advocates for left-of-center environmental policies such as the promotion of electric vehicles and opposition to fossil fuels and nuclear power. ²

Background

Michigan Interfaith Power and Light is a nondenominational faith-based group that advances left-of-center energy policies in Michigan. ¹

MIIPL operates programs to assist churches and other houses of worship in undertaking “green” building and remodeling projects. ³ Funding for these programs has come from the federal government, the Michigan government, and private foundations and donors.  ^{4  5  6}

During the Biden administration, the White House website used an MIIPL project with a Detroit church as an example of how nonprofits could access federal funds under the Inflation Reduction Act. ⁷

Advocacy and Activism

While Michigan Interfaith Power and Light’s primary focus is on its work with houses of worship to implement energy efficiency and other “green” building technologies, it is also active in environmental policy advocacy and activism in Michigan. ⁸

It supports the implementation of the Biden administration’s Clean Power Plan and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) plan to require electrical utilities to transition to 100 percent “clean” energy by 2040. It also opposes the operation of the Line 5 petrochemical pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas, supports stricter vehicle emissions standards, and advocates increased federal and state funding for municipal drinking water systems. ⁸

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

Michigan Interfaith Power and Light was a co-signer on an April 2021 letter to then-President Joe Biden that asked the administration to promote weather-dependent wind and solar power systems and “end the fossil fuel era.” ² The letter also advised the president to “Phase out nuclear energy as an inherently dirty, dangerous and costly energy source.” ²

Funding

Michigan Interfaith Power and Light (MIIPL) receives funding from government grants, foundation grants, and other private donors. ⁹

In 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded an $80,000 grant to Adamah Detroit, MIIPL’s partner organization, to operate a series of climate workshops promoting left-of-center environmental policies. ¹⁰

In 2023, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan announced that it would be making grants to MIIPL to assist houses of worship with installing solar panels and other energy efficiency tools. ⁴

In 2008, MIIPL received a $50,000 grant from the Michigan Public Service Commission to conduct “energy workshops and awareness events aimed at its congregation members and the general public.” ¹¹